Okay, admit it. You've Googled yourself. Everyone does it. But I haven't done it in a long time and when I did, I was amazed at how many places my name is stamped across the interwebs. Like, seriously amazed! I mean, I don't use Goodreads, have never been there until today, but I have an author page. Weird! I even have reviews....
Because my name is unique (the only 5 Larkindales in the world are my parents, my sister, me and one of my sons - the other has his Dad's last name, just to be confusing) Googling myself is easy. Any mention of Larkindale is going to be someone in my family. But what is interesting is how many places my name shows up.
Blog comments seem to be the most prevalent, and my film reviews. Various interviews I've given about cinema related stuff, my published stories. All these things pop up when I Google my name. More disturbing are the people finding sites which appear to not only have my name, but my email addresses, a photo which I don't even recognize (where did they get it???) and numerous other pieces of personal information. It's a little scary.
I live a lot of my life on the internet and always assume that while I'm not anonymous, there aren't people tracking my every move. But it appears this is not the case.
Have you Googled yourself lately? Found anything peculiar or scary? What do you do about it?
I'm the only Kelly Hashway who comes up on Google. I like that too. My maiden name was so common. I knew a ton of Kelly Bradleys. Seriously, i met so many people who told me they knew other Kelly Bradleys and there was even another in the town I lived in. Very frustrating. I like that it's just me on Google now. And, yes, I'm all over the internet. It's fun to Google your name and see where you pop up.
ReplyDeleteI'm the only me who comes up on google. Loralie isn't a super common name :-D But it's funny you mention finding things you didn't know were out there. I googled a phone number yesterday that had called and I didn't recognize.
ReplyDeleteGoogle took me to a page with hundreds of names and phone numbers that looked like a marketing list. I doubt the person who called me (probably a wrong number) or anyone else on that list has any idea all their information is out there public and exposed. I have no clue who to contact to have the list pulled down for the sake of those people.
I used to have google alerts set up but it made me CRAZY lol:) I haven't looked myself up in a while, but I suspect my blog would come up pretty quick, followed by who knows what:)
ReplyDeleteI was just wondering why Lexa Cain doesn't come up in Yahoo searches. But it comes up on Google, so that's good. I hate that my real name is out there--and my pic--due to YALitChat. I'd like to scrub that away. I'm a privacy freak...
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